vituperation

Today is the spud’s birthday (she’s 17). Were you to wish her a happy one in the comments, she’d see it since she’s now a reader. If you’re lucky she’ll respond, and tell you she loves and misses you very much.

The first short story I wrote as an adult, Holy Roller, is online, and can be read right here.

…continued

I looked more closely into my mouth. My gum exuded blue stuff—that’s the scientific name—and streamers of it hung all around what was left of my cracked tooth. I couldn’t see the tooth so well because of the cotton, but I could tell that a great deal of it was no longer there.

I noticed a blue stripe running down my nose, and swiped it off.

Back in the operating chair, I waited another eternity for the dentist to return. When she did, she was carrying another of those large gun-like utensils that dentists always seem to use. They’re like modern-day gunslingers, dentists.

Gumslingers.

I opened my mouth and she squirted a big blop of something onto my tooth nubbin. Senior handed her something from behind me, which turned out to be something like an adult-sized pacifier loaded with a substance that looked a lot like Silly Putty.

As it turns out, it tasted like Silly Putty too.

She stuck the device into my mouth, made me bite down, and left again. Dentists sure seem to stay on the move a lot. Now that I think about it, I don’t recollect ever seeing a fat one. One of the benefits of the job, I guess.

The mold took about five minutes to cast. She came back in and popped it out of my mouth.

“Uh oh,” she said to Senior. Both of them were behind me. “Look at this.”

“Looks like his teeth slid,” Senior said.

“At least the top part’s good. We can just put more of the [I forget] in and redo it.”

Cripes.

Dr. P stepped back into view and sat down.

“We didn’t get a good cast,” she said. “Not because of anything you did, but because we moved the mold when you were biting down. We have to do it again.”

I nodded, and opened my mouth. She splurted another big glop of something—it was blue, like the stringy stuff—onto my nubbin and put the pacifier back into my mouth. At her direction, I bit down slowly, and when I did, a great big dollop of Silly Putty oozed out and lodged under my tongue.

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” Dr. P said, and left.

I worked at the Silly Putty with my tongue, trying to move it to the side without moving my clenched teeth and ruining a second cast. I got the Silly Putty to move, but not to the side. Instead, it moved to the front, where it spread out and stuck to my teeth, top and bottom. Every time I swallowed, my tongue pressed on it a little, forcing it through the spaces between my teeth like Playdoh in a child’s toy.

I fretted the whole time that my teeth were going to end up stuck together, envisioning a horrific scene wherein Dr. P was climbed up on the chair, straddling me while she tried to wrench my mouth open. Fortunately, my teeth didn’t stick. Instead, I just had a blue smile, which is something I’ve had before so it was no big deal.

“Much better,” Dr. P said, looking at the second cast. “We can use this to get a perfect crown made.”

“Excellent,” I said.

“Senior’s going to fit you with a temporary crown now. The real one won’t be ready for a couple of weeks.”

Senior did just that, in an interminable loop of testing, biting down, and grinding. Finally, the temporary crown was done and I was sent on my merry way with instructions forbidding me to floss around the crown or eat anything hard or sticky. I’m set to go back next Monday for the real thing, which they assure me will go a lot faster.

It still hurts to eat popcorn on that side, too, dammit.

Yeah, baby. Now that’s a spider.